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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Colombia
Spain
Iran
Poland
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Ukraine
Indonesia
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Hungary
Chile
Canada
Belgium
Ecuador
Pakistan
Philippines
Netherlands
Bulgaria
Portugal
Iraq
Sweden
Egypt
Bolivia
Slovakia
Bangladesh
Tunisia
Greece
Japan
Switzerland
Austria
Jordan
Morocco
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Croatia
Lebanon
Paraguay
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Israel
Panama
Moldova
Honduras
North Macedonia
Ireland
Azerbaijan
China
Nepal
Georgia
Slovenia
Armenia
Lithuania
Ethiopia
Dominican Republic
Costa Rica
West Bank and Gaza
Kazakhstan
Algeria
Uruguay
Burma
Libya
Kenya
Afghanistan
Belarus
Denmark
Sudan
Albania
Venezuela
Latvia
Kosovo
El Salvador
Oman
Nigeria
South Korea
Malaysia
Syria
Kyrgyzstan
Kuwait
United Arab Emirates
Zimbabwe
Montenegro
Zambia
Estonia
Malawi
Cameroon
Senegal
Finland
Australia
Sri Lanka
Jamaica
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Cuba
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Somalia
Botswana
Madagascar
Bahrain
Namibia
Eswatini
Uzbekistan
Angola
Qatar
Thailand
Mali
Mauritania
Malta
Uganda
Cyprus
Rwanda
Guyana
Belize
Lesotho
Cote d'Ivoire
Haiti
Trinidad and Tobago
Cabo Verde
Suriname
Bahamas
Hong Kong
Mongolia
Burkina Faso
Guinea
Djibouti
Congo (Brazzaville)
Gabon
Cambodia
Papua New Guinea
Andorra
Togo
South Sudan

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Colombia
Spain
Iran
Poland
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Ukraine
Indonesia
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Hungary
Chile
Canada
Belgium
Ecuador
Pakistan
Philippines
Netherlands
Bulgaria
Portugal
Iraq
Sweden
Egypt
Bolivia
Slovakia
Bangladesh
Tunisia
Greece
Japan
Switzerland
Austria
Jordan
Morocco
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Croatia
Lebanon
Paraguay
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Israel
Panama
Moldova
Honduras
North Macedonia
Ireland
Azerbaijan
China
Nepal
Georgia
Slovenia
Armenia
Lithuania
Ethiopia
Dominican Republic
Costa Rica
West Bank and Gaza
Kazakhstan
Algeria
Uruguay
Burma
Libya
Kenya
Afghanistan
Belarus
Denmark
Sudan
Albania
Venezuela
Latvia
Kosovo
El Salvador
Oman
Nigeria
South Korea
Malaysia
Syria
Kyrgyzstan
Kuwait
United Arab Emirates
Zimbabwe
Montenegro
Zambia
Estonia
Malawi
Cameroon
Senegal
Finland
Australia
Sri Lanka
Jamaica
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Cuba
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Somalia
Botswana
Madagascar
Bahrain
Namibia
Eswatini
Uzbekistan
Angola
Qatar
Thailand
Mali
Mauritania
Malta
Uganda
Cyprus
Rwanda
Guyana
Belize
Lesotho
Cote d'Ivoire
Haiti
Trinidad and Tobago
Cabo Verde
Suriname
Bahamas
Hong Kong
Mongolia
Burkina Faso
Guinea
Djibouti
Congo (Brazzaville)
Gabon
Cambodia
Papua New Guinea
Andorra
Togo
South Sudan